Incorporating Design Management Culture within the Total Project Management Process: a Socio-technical Approach. New project delivery methods (e.g. design & construct; alliance contracting) in major commercial and infrastructure projects have the potential to dramatically increase the value added to clients and the wider community.
However to realise this potential, we need to better understand those socio-technical factors that foster an effective design management culture within tradition ....Incorporating Design Management Culture within the Total Project Management Process: a Socio-technical Approach. New project delivery methods (e.g. design & construct; alliance contracting) in major commercial and infrastructure projects have the potential to dramatically increase the value added to clients and the wider community.
However to realise this potential, we need to better understand those socio-technical factors that foster an effective design management culture within traditional construction companies, especially their knowledge sharing culture.
This project will develop and test an innovative research methodology that blends approaches from the social sciences and engineering. The findings regarding design management will have wide applicability to industry and cover civil, building, mining and process engineering projects, each of which has its own culture.Read moreRead less
Life Cycle Measures of Cost Effectiveness for 4 D CAD in Design and Construct Projects across Industry Sectors. The effective and efficient delivery of complex construction projects will be transformed by the increased application of virtual design and construction technologies, including 4D CAD. By combining a 3D computer model of a design with the time dimension of the construction schedule, 4D CAD enables risks and opportunities to be better managed during the design phase and hence avoid co ....Life Cycle Measures of Cost Effectiveness for 4 D CAD in Design and Construct Projects across Industry Sectors. The effective and efficient delivery of complex construction projects will be transformed by the increased application of virtual design and construction technologies, including 4D CAD. By combining a 3D computer model of a design with the time dimension of the construction schedule, 4D CAD enables risks and opportunities to be better managed during the design phase and hence avoid costly issues during construction. However this requires addition design costs which currently represent a barrier to the uptake of this transforming technology. This project will overcome this by developing a flexible framework that allows the benefits gained across the life cycle of a project through using 4D CAD to be set against the additional costs and thus make this emerging technology more attractive to industry. Significantly this research will be based on comparative cases studies across different industry sectors including civil, building, and process engineering.Read moreRead less
Delivering Digital Architecture in Australia. Design, documentation, and off-site prefabrication of numerous recent major international architectural projects, were achieved with evolving integrated 3D digital methods. While Australian architects, engineers, manufacturers, fabricators, and constructors have participated in a few such projects using these technologies, generally, local understanding and uptake of the opportunities is still very low. Growth in this area means growth in an existi ....Delivering Digital Architecture in Australia. Design, documentation, and off-site prefabrication of numerous recent major international architectural projects, were achieved with evolving integrated 3D digital methods. While Australian architects, engineers, manufacturers, fabricators, and constructors have participated in a few such projects using these technologies, generally, local understanding and uptake of the opportunities is still very low. Growth in this area means growth in an existing export rather than increasing reliance on importing these services and products. More fundamentally, it means a huge cultural dividend to Australia from greater affordable freedom of architectural expression.Read moreRead less
Dynamic Controllability Analysis for Plantwide Process Design and Control. World-wide chemical plants represent many billions of dollars of investment. Improvements to the process designs in terms of controllability would have the potential to provide large economic benefits, as it implies improved productivity, reduced operating costs and product variability. This proposed research will be a step towards integration of process design and control, which has been widely recognized as the key to t ....Dynamic Controllability Analysis for Plantwide Process Design and Control. World-wide chemical plants represent many billions of dollars of investment. Improvements to the process designs in terms of controllability would have the potential to provide large economic benefits, as it implies improved productivity, reduced operating costs and product variability. This proposed research will be a step towards integration of process design and control, which has been widely recognized as the key to this improvement. The outcomes from this project may be readily implemented in process design practice, and therefore have a direct impact to the Australian and world-wide process industries, helping to build a more efficient and environmental conscious Australian process industries.Read moreRead less
The Identification and Development of Strategies for Increasing Engineering Enrolments. There is a continuing nation-wide decline in high school student enrolment in higher level mathematics and science. This is already leading to a reduction in the number of students undertaking university engineering programs in Australia and the situation is expected to worsen. This project is directed toward a better understanding of the reasons for the trend and the development of strategies to reverse it. ....The Identification and Development of Strategies for Increasing Engineering Enrolments. There is a continuing nation-wide decline in high school student enrolment in higher level mathematics and science. This is already leading to a reduction in the number of students undertaking university engineering programs in Australia and the situation is expected to worsen. This project is directed toward a better understanding of the reasons for the trend and the development of strategies to reverse it. It aims to 1. Evaluate the most effective strategies that increase student's interests and understanding of engineering and increase participation in engineering studies. 2. Develop an optimised national communication strategy for promoting engineering studies to secondary students.Read moreRead less
Tissue Engineering of Human Heart Valve Grown In Vitro. Tissue engineering (TE) of heart valves is a new approach to cultivate a functional heart valve from human autologous cells. This innovative study aims to develop the technology to transplant cells onto a 3D biocompatible valve scaffold that is capable of mimicking native valve. The work proposed is a ground breaking study that will encompass development of a new biomaterial, manufacture of scaffolds using the Fused Deposition Modelling ra ....Tissue Engineering of Human Heart Valve Grown In Vitro. Tissue engineering (TE) of heart valves is a new approach to cultivate a functional heart valve from human autologous cells. This innovative study aims to develop the technology to transplant cells onto a 3D biocompatible valve scaffold that is capable of mimicking native valve. The work proposed is a ground breaking study that will encompass development of a new biomaterial, manufacture of scaffolds using the Fused Deposition Modelling rapid prototyping process, hemodynamic optimisation and in vitro cell culture. This will advance our knowledge in cellular and scaffold technologies and may ultimately lead to the development of a TE heart valve.Read moreRead less
Fluid dynamics and mechanical stress of tissue heart valves. Major problems with thrombo-embolic complications and leaflet failure and calcification still exist with bioprosthetic valves. Valves fabricated from polyether urethanes are efficient and can offer more resistance to calcification. No complete study on the haemodynamics and structure interactions is found in literature. Moreover, todate the effect of aortic wall motion on the blood flow has never been examined. A complete holistic ap ....Fluid dynamics and mechanical stress of tissue heart valves. Major problems with thrombo-embolic complications and leaflet failure and calcification still exist with bioprosthetic valves. Valves fabricated from polyether urethanes are efficient and can offer more resistance to calcification. No complete study on the haemodynamics and structure interactions is found in literature. Moreover, todate the effect of aortic wall motion on the blood flow has never been examined. A complete holistic approach to simulataneuosly simulating the fluid dynamics, the valve motion and the stress in a synthetic Polyether urethane valve is proposed. Cell adhesion study will also be carried out. The findings may yield to new insights into valve research.Read moreRead less
Robust fluid mixing through topological chaos. The Australian chemicals and plastics industry has an annual turnover of over $20 billion and employs over 77,000 people; fluid mixing is fundamental to this industry, yet the industry is recognised as underinvesting in research and development in this essential area. Furthermore, frontier technologies such as biotechnology and the next generation of smart materials also crucially rely on fluid mixing. This project aims to evaluate a new paradigm ( ....Robust fluid mixing through topological chaos. The Australian chemicals and plastics industry has an annual turnover of over $20 billion and employs over 77,000 people; fluid mixing is fundamental to this industry, yet the industry is recognised as underinvesting in research and development in this essential area. Furthermore, frontier technologies such as biotechnology and the next generation of smart materials also crucially rely on fluid mixing. This project aims to evaluate a new paradigm (topological chaos) for the design of mixers, to provide better and more robust mixers that work from microscopic to industrial scales.Read moreRead less
Development of a Novel One Step Process for Gas Conversion to Liquid. Australia has a rich natural gas reserve, most of which is in remote locations. This project will lead to a new technology to use the remote gas that would be flared into the atmosphere, thus benefiting both Australian economy and green house gas reduction. It will also reduce the risk of relying on importing oil from Overseas thus contributing to Australia's energy security. In addition, while crude-based oil emits SOx, NOx a ....Development of a Novel One Step Process for Gas Conversion to Liquid. Australia has a rich natural gas reserve, most of which is in remote locations. This project will lead to a new technology to use the remote gas that would be flared into the atmosphere, thus benefiting both Australian economy and green house gas reduction. It will also reduce the risk of relying on importing oil from Overseas thus contributing to Australia's energy security. In addition, while crude-based oil emits SOx, NOx and particulates etc into air, the liquid fuels from gas are pure and burns cleanly thus also contributing to air pollution control. Read moreRead less
Hydrogen Production by Non-thermal Plasma Assisted Catalytic Pyrolysis of Natural Gas. This project aims to develop a cost effective technology for hydrogen production using catalytic pyrolysis of natural gas assisted by non-thermal plasma. The mechanism and kinetics of catalytic hydrocarbon decomposition on carbons produced in situ will be systematically studied. Based on the fundamental understanding of carbon nanostructures and their catalytic activities and stabilities, the non-thermal plasm ....Hydrogen Production by Non-thermal Plasma Assisted Catalytic Pyrolysis of Natural Gas. This project aims to develop a cost effective technology for hydrogen production using catalytic pyrolysis of natural gas assisted by non-thermal plasma. The mechanism and kinetics of catalytic hydrocarbon decomposition on carbons produced in situ will be systematically studied. Based on the fundamental understanding of carbon nanostructures and their catalytic activities and stabilities, the non-thermal plasma and the catalytic reactions will be optimized to achieve high conversion and catalytic stability. The project will lead to a new process combining effective carbon catalyst and low temperature plasma to produce pure hydrogen with high energy efficiency and no CO2 emissions.Read moreRead less